US Officials Fear Moner Mohammad Abusalha’s Jihad Video Will Inspire Others – NYTimes.com

2014/06/18 Leave a comment

More on home-grown terrorism, this time a US example:

Although the suicide bomber was not identified by nationality or name, a video was circulated last month that appears to have documented Mr. Abusalha’s mission. That previous video shows rebels loading what appear to be tank shells into a large vehicle that had been armored with metal plates. Later, there is a large explosion after the vehicle drives down a road.

Mr. Abusalha was born in Florida, played basketball as a teenager and was known as “Mo.” In high school, he would often sneak out to pray instead of study. His mother is American and his father Palestinian. They owned grocery stores in the Vero Beach, Fla., area.

After graduating from high school, he enrolled in three colleges but dropped out of each, and in 2012, he told friends he was moving to Orlando. Shortly thereafter he told friends he was moving to Jordan to take courses as a nursing assistant.

In the past year, he lost touch with his parents. His friends believe that he was recruited by extremists while he was living in Jordan. In Syria, he adopted a nom de guerre, Abu Huraira al-Amriki. He spent two months in a training camp of Nusra Front, the militant group, in Aleppo before going to the northern province of Idlib, where he carried out the suicide attack.

US Officials estimate that some 100 Americans have travelled to Syria. Seems a bit low given Canadian estimates of around 30.

Officials Fear Moner Mohammad Abusalha’s Jihad Video Will Inspire Others – NYTimes.com.

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Why Multiculturalism is Not Enough | Michael Bond

2014/06/18 Leave a comment

More on multiculturalism and integration, and how the depth of personal relationships can make a difference:

How much social integration is necessary to immunize diverse communities against inter-group conflict and mistrust? One answer comes from the political scientist Ashutosh Varshney, who has studied why unrest between different religious and ethnic groups in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Malaysia is more prevalent in some places than in others.

Varshney has found that a crucial condition for ethnic harmony is intercommunal engagement at a deep level. It is not enough for two groups merely to know each other as neighbours. They should be mixing in business associations, sports clubs, trade unions, political parties, community organizations, student unions and so on.

This kind of grassroots integration acts as a constraint on the polarizing strategies of leaders who are often all too keen to exploit differences for political gain. It gives communities an incentive to prevent sparks from becoming fires. In stable, mixed societies, engagement is built into the civic structure.

Why Multiculturalism is Not Enough | Michael Bond.

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BBC News – France National Front rift widens in anti-Semitism row

2014/06/18 Leave a comment

Couldn’t happen to a nicer family:

Mr Le Pen said there had been “no courtesy” in the handling of the affair in comments to French media on Tuesday.

“I can take direct hits to the face but not cowardly ones in the back,” he said.

He told French magazine Inrocks he had been “stabbed in the back” and told French radio station RTL that no-one could withhold his freedom of expression.

“I have no intention of changing my attitude,” he said.

He has previously argued that he did not know Bruel was Jewish.

BBC News – France National Front rift widens in anti-Semitism row.

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ICYMI: The United States of Metrics – NYTimes.com

2014/06/18 Leave a comment

Nice piece by Bruce Feller on the penchant to measure everything and the quantified self:

Given that everyone faces messiness sooner or later but that everyone also seems to enjoy a bit of data gazing, maybe what’s needed is a fresh way of putting all these numbers in perspective. Curiously, one seems to be at hand, and it’s even got backing from the social scientists: It’s called the law of diminishing returns. Numbers can help, but after a while they become overkill. What we need is a simpler model, something more akin to pass-fail.

“The analogy I would make is diet,” Mr. Watts, of Microsoft Research, said. “If you do a rigorous, exhaustive study of dietary science, I guarantee all you’re going to get is confused. There are thousands of studies out there, and they’re all contradictory. It’s just hopeless. Instead, eat reasonable food, exercise, get a good night’s sleep. After all, you might get hit by a bus tomorrow.”

Mr. Taleb concurs. There are two schools of thought about metrics, he said. You can optimize everything, or you can do what the ancients did and say, “Good enough.”

“Good enough is vastly more rigorous than any metric,” he said, “and it’s more humane, too. Once you reduce a human to a metric, you kill them.”

Or, as the greatest numbers person of the 20th century, Albert Einstein, warned, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

The United States of Metrics – NYTimes.com.

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How Canadian are Hong Kong’s 300,000 Chinese-Canadians? – The Globe and Mail

2014/06/17 Leave a comment

Interesting piece on Chinese Canadian expatriates in Hong Kong, and how they maintain their Canadian identity. As always, identity is more complex than ‘bumper stickers’ like citizens of convenience would suggest.

Surprising that Yuen Pau Woo, of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada didn’t mention this study in his presentation to the Senate Committee examining C-24 last week:

They found that “the lack of opportunities in Canada,” rather than any preference for China, was the primary reason for almost all of these youth moving to Hong Kong. Many worked in fields such as finance where they felt Canada had a glass ceiling for ethnic-Chinese employees: “The nature and systemic discrimination of the Canadian job market pushed many new-generation youth to seek alternative job opportunities.”

Most of them, however, spent much of their time in Hong Kong attempting to maintain a “Canadian” lifestyle. “This,” the researchers note, “includes drinking in bars, watching hockey, reading Canadian newspapers, and drinking Starbucks coffee.” Tim Hortons, it should be noted, is not available in Hong Kong.

“While I am at work, in a break,” one of their research subjects says, “I’m watching a Canucks game through my iPhone.”

And furthermore, they found that the Chinese-Canadians weren’t fitting in to local Hong Kong social circles, because they were determined to keep their Canadian ties: “This group of Chinese-Canadian youth seem to have made a conscious choice not to hang out with local youth, due to their resistance to local Chinese culture. Indeed, their desire for Canadian connections was manifested in the patterns of their social circles, which also showed their detachment from Hong Kong society.”

Most, they found, were experiencing some form of culture shock – while they had the language skills and citizenship necessary to work and live in Hong Kong, they did not feel like Chinese, even if they had lived there for years. “Being Canadian, many felt that they came with a Canadian perspective that differentiated them from local Chinese. They also tended to use Canadian cultural values and practices to distinguish themselves from local Chinese.”

A majority described themselves as Canadian first and Chinese second. And, most importantly, almost all described themselves as “tentatively temporary” immigrants, who fully intended to return to Canada, which they saw as “home,” to put down roots and raise their families at some point in the future.

Another such study, conducted in 2012 in India, found the same result: Second-generation Indian-Canadians living in India saw themselves as Canadians living in India for convenience and money, not as Indians who’d once lived in Canada for convenience.

While there are undoubtedly some Canadian passport holders living abroad who are simply using the citizenship as a convenience, actual research suggests that the majority of such people are loyal Canadians who are using their international connections to benefit their country – which, as they see it, is Canada.

How Canadian are Hong Kong’s 300,000 Chinese-Canadians? – The Globe and Mail.

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Public service not irrelevant | Michael Hatfield (pay wall)

2014/06/17 Leave a comment

More on recent comments by David Emerson and Wayne Wouters (Public servants risk becoming policy dinosaurs, David Emerson warns), and policy advice from inside and outside government. Michael Hatfield has had experience on both sides of the policy divide and captures some of the weaknesses in Emerson and Wouter’s arguments. He neglects, however, to address adequately some of the biases in public service advice that public servants need to be more mindful of:

As Emerson suggests, it is vital for the public interest that ministers have access to the highest quality and best-informed policy advice in order to make good policy decisions. But that advice will only be forthcoming and respected under two conditions. The first is that ministers are open to hearing ideas and information that may be at variance with their own preferences. The second is that public servants focus on assuring ministers that their priority is to provide access to the best information and advice they can find which is relevant to the minister’s interests and responsibilities.

Contrary to what Wouters seems to think, simply aggregating and adapting to the Canadian context the methods and approaches of outside analysts and sources of data is neither the best nor the only realistic future role for the public service. Instead, the public service needs to return its focus to developing and maintaining high quality data sources and professional expertise and knowledge in public policy areas and identifying early on those public policy questions which are ministerial priorities. That is the way the public service can best serve the real interests of ministers and the broader public interest. The question then becomes is the Clerk prepared to make available the resources necessary to sustaining public service relevance?

Public service not irrelevant | hilltimes.com.

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Holocaust Museum Urges Ukraine To Examine Its History of Anti-Semitism – Forward.com

2014/06/17 Leave a comment

Good initiative by the US Holocaust Museum:

Aware of the country’s current turmoil, a delegation of museum officials visiting Kiev presented the proposal as an idea, not necessarily as an immediate priority to be implemented quickly. But according to museum director Sara Bloomfield, the initial response from Ukrainian officials was positive.

“In this country — you can’t really separate communism, Nazism and anti-Semitism,” Bloomfield said in a June 8 phone interview from Kiev. She noted that discussing anti-Semitism and teaching about it in Ukraine should span from the early twentieth century, including the infamous 1913 blood libel trial of Menachem Mendel Beilis through the Stalinist persecution of Jews and the collaboration of some Ukrainian nationalists with the Nazis during the Third Reich’s occupation of the country.

Bloomfield visited Ukraine during the first week of June to meet with representatives of the newly-elected government and with scholars and members of the Jewish community. Her talks focused on practical issues, including gaining full access to Communist-era archives. But Bloomfield also sought to begin a process of dialogue aimed at getting Ukraine to reckon with its own history.

“Ukraine is in dire need of a new, more honest and complex historical narrative that reflects all the difficult issues of its history, including its darkest chapters,” wrote Bloomfield and her colleague, Vadim Altskan, a project manager in the museum’s international archival program, in a Global Post op-ed published before their trip to Ukraine. “It will not be easy, but Ukraine has a unique opportunity to validate the importance of an honest reckoning with history, recognizing that only a democratic nation can guarantee the security, freedom and prosperity of all its citizens.”

Following her meetings in Kiev, Bloomfield was cautious despite the positive response from Ukrainian officials to her idea of establishing a commission. “The reality is that right now, the country has many very urgent issues to deal with,” she said.

Ukrainian Jewish Encounter | Facebook is a Canadian initiative that has similar aims, given that there have been tensions both in Ukraine over its history as well as in the Canadian diasporas over World War II war crimes and most recently, over the relative weight and depictions between the Holocaust and the Holodomor.

Holocaust Museum Urges Ukraine To Examine Its History of Anti-Semitism – Forward.com.

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La peur des immigrants, une tendance au 450?

2014/06/17 Leave a comment

Interesting and somewhat surprising study on Quebec francophones who feel culturally threatened by immigrants and new Canadians. Suburban dwellers feel more threatened than those in the regions, likely reflecting less diversity than in Toronto’s 905 equivalent:

Pourcentage des francophones qui se sentent culturellement menacés par les immigrants:

  • Montréal 37 %
  • Couronne Nord 47 %
  • Rive-Sud 43 %
  • Régions éloignées 41 %

La peur des immigrants, une tendance au 450? | Hugo Pilon-Larose | Montréal.

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‘I can’t be stateless’: Born-in-Canada criminal fighting deportation after Ottawa decides citizenship not valid

2014/06/17 Leave a comment

Interesting case of Deepan Budlakoti, born, raised and lived in Canada but to parents with diplomatic status but who has lived all his life in Canada:

Mr. Budlakoti is being removed from Canada for ‘serious criminality.’ He served significant jail time [three years] for trafficking both weapons and drugs. Even though Mr. Budlakoti was born in Canada, he is not a citizen due to the 1977 Citizenship Act which amended the rule to exclude all children of foreign-born diplomats born in Canada from Canadian citizenship unless one of the parents was a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. No application for citizenship has ever been made by him or on his behalf.”

Canada is a signatory to a 1961 international convention that imposes a duty to reduce statelessness.

Asking a court to declare Mr. Budlakoti’s citizenship “is an exceptional remedy because this is an exceptional case,” Mr. Hameed said. “It’s exceptional because Deepan was born in Canada, lived his entire life in Canada, and was assured on multiple occasions by the government of Canada that he was a Canadian citizen. … If there was an issue or a problem, the onus was clearly on the Canadian government to have done its due diligence, to determine whether or not there’s some exception to the rule or whether they have their records straight.”

To argue today, more than two decades later, that Canada made a mistake by issuing the passports is “very prejudicial and unfair,” said Mr. Hameed. “Now, with a finding of criminal inadmissibility, it basically bars him from taking the normal steps that he would have taken, or could have taken, to become a citizen earlier on.”

‘I can’t be stateless’: Born-in-Canada criminal fighting deportation after Ottawa decides citizenship not valid

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ICYMI: Bill C-24 set to change who gets to be Canadian | Q with Jian Ghomeshi

2014/06/16 1 Comment

Jian Ghomeshi on C-24 and what it means to be a Canadian (4 minutes):

We as citizens seem to have missed the opportunity to have a larger national debate …. appears to divide Canadians into two classes: those that hold Canadian citizenship and those that hold more than one passport, and somehow that doesn’t ring true … a citizen is a citizen …

Q Essay: Bill C-24 set to change who gets to be Canadian | Q with Jian Ghomeshi | CBC Radio.

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